Today at 1PM in room 400 at City Hall there will be a hearing on recycling. Philadelphia is recycling only 5 percent of its residential waste, literally throwing away $17 million every year. Come out today and support an expanded recycling program!

Also today, 100 middle school students from across the city will participate in a GreenPlan meeting. GreenPlan is the city’s comprehensive open spaces plan. “Following the format used for the 12 community GreenPlan meetings conducted this fall, students will work in small groups to share their issues and concerns for open spaces”, according to the Mayor’s office. Engaging kids in this effort is very meaningful, not only so that they get a glimpse of what participating in public life is about, but also because most of the GreenPlan projects will only be realized over the course of decades, and will require their interest and stewardship to see through.

Check out this great coverage from Hallwatch.org. Jeff Benedict led the fight in Connecticut to stop the expansion of gambling in that state. He offered great insight into what it takes to win as well as arguments that refute the casinos claims that they will bring great revenues and jobs. Watch video clips of his talk at Hallwatch.

Today, Casino Free Philadelphia handed in over 27,000 petition signatures at City Hall!! This constitutes the largest, bipartisan petition drive ever in the city. The drive took place over the span of about three weeks, and despite much adverse weather. Over a hundred volunteers from civic associations across the city participated. This sends a loud and clear statement to the powers that be that Philadelphians demand the right to a say in the future development of their city. Great going, Philadelphia!

Well, I’m officially a candidate for a City Council At-Large seat. Feels weird, kind of, but it’s really not that different from the work I’ve been doing anyway, just a lot more public. Today I participated in a press conference at City Hall- there were 15 candidates total- calling for Council to reject Council Member James Kenney’s bill to raise campaign finance caps. Each of us had the chance to speak for about a minute and all of us agreed that changing campaign laws in the middle of an election cycle was a terrible idea. I said, basically, that we should take a look at clean election systems and have an open debate about their pros and cons, but that the time to do that is after the election. Changing campaign laws in the middle of an election cycle is definitely NOT the right time.

I talked about how the largest expenditure for elections is campaign ads. In 1997, broadcasters were granted additional spectrum to help them prepare for digital technologies. At the same time, a panel issued recommendations that said in exchange for that extra spectrum (owned by the public), and to fulfill their public interest obligations (which broadcasters so often like to ignore), they should donate 5 minutes of free air time to candidates each night for 30 days before elections. This could be used for debates, policy statements, responses to citizen questions, town hall meetings- to convey quality election information to the people. If broadcasters took their public interest obligations more seriously, it would significantly lower the cost of elections for everyone, and would certainly help “level the playing field”.

Clean election laws give politics back to the people. Instead of spending hours talking to donors on the phone, or attending pricey dinners, candidates who choose to participate in a publicly financed campaign system go out and talk to people. Elections are then about electors and THEIR issues, not special interests and their lobbies. Clean election laws encourage people who would otherwise feel priced out of politics to run. This is good for democracy.

We’ve made some progress on campaign reform in Philly. It’s vital to open and transparent democracy that we not take a step back now.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) officially lists 8 criteria by which they judged the casino applicants hoping to site facilities in Philadelphia, one of them being “Community Impacts”. However, in their rationale for choosing Foxwoods and SugarHouse over the other sites they emphasized that location was a major factor, and that community opposition wasn’t too great. That’s funny because river ward residents have been howling for months, almost a year now, that the Foxwoods and SugarHouse sites were especially terrible locations. SugarHouse is located less than 200′ from the nearest Fishtown residence and actually abuts Penn Treaty Park, a park that families in the growing neighborhoods of Northern Liberties and Fishtown routinely use. Who will Penn Treaty Park belong to when SugarHouse opens? Drug dealers, panhandlers, thieves, prostitutes and drunks.

Foxwoods too is unconscionably close to the Pennsport neighborhood, and its traffic mitigation plans, some fear, can only be executed at the expense of homes taken through eminent domain. The traffic plans drawn up by the casinos create beelines to and from their sites without regard to the cost to neighboring communities- to local businesses, or to the fabric of Philadelphia, a city all cherish for its neighborhoods. To add insult to injury, Philadelphia residents will be asked to subsidize the very infrastructure changes that will wreck their quality of life. And when the people who live here send their children to school in the morning, they will have to fear the drunken losers coming from the nearby casinos. Who will our streets belong to then?

Another criteria is “Economic Impact” by which the PGCB means how many jobs the casinos will bring to the area. Never did they analyze the harm to existing jobs: to the owners of small businesses, local bars and restaurants, and the people they employ. Stunningly, no one took into account the impact two waterfront casinos will have on 45,000 family-sustaining port industry jobs. And no one disputes the inevitable loss in property values for nearby homes.

Casinos and the state are targeting our city for one reason: to extract wealth from our region. Though some would have us look at casino operators as just another private developer, the truth is that gambling brings with it a bevy of vices and undesirable fallout that other types of development don’t bring. The casinos (and the state) rake off the profits and leave the surrounding communities to deal with the baggage. But we need the wage tax benefits, you say? Wage tax relief will accrue to the city even if we never open a siingle casino here because it will come from all the revenues collected statewide. We do not have to ruin our city to get these benefits. And there is any number of better ideas for growing our riverfront wisely and well, ideas that will strengthen our local economy for the long term and bring good jobs.

There have long been emerging two conflicting visions for the central Delaware riverfront. One is the view held by the state, the members of Council, and our Mayor that the river should be a commercial Las Vegas-style strip with casinos anchoring the north and south. The PGCB sees I-95 as a desirable “buffer” that will protect the neighborhoods from the river. Their view is to augment that separation. If they succeed, to whom will our riverfront belong then?

The other view is that expressed by residents in Greenplan meetings, PennPraxis forums and Great Expectations gatherings, that the neighborhoods should be more connected to the river. The casinos that were licensed are sparing no expense to prepare themselves for legal challenges. But the citizens of Philadelphia are banding together also to protect their investment in Philadelphia: their children, their communities, their quality of life. No one asked them whether or not they wanted casinos in their city. But when asked what they do want this is what they primarily said: they want to preserve the neighborliness, diversity, and safety they feel in their own communities, they want open spaces, family-friendly recreation, businesses that support a strong local economy rather than suck it dry, community-driven planning, and restoration of the natural beauty of the river, so that it becomes an amenity for the whole city.

Well, this is sad to write. I attended the steering committee meeting of the PennPraxis/Philly Planning Commission-led central Delaware Riverfront development initiative on January 29th. It was an excellent meeting. Paul Levy of Center City District led with the proposal that the Praxis plan be flexible with a build/no build option concerning the casinos. There was NO dissent in the room, except from Harris Steinberg (of Praxis) and Janice Woodcock (PCPC)- they have the non-open and transparent parts of the process to consider. But everyone else in the room was pulling in the same direction. No one thought casinos on the riverfront was a good idea, and everyone felt that there was at least an even chance that they would be defeated. I left that meeting with hope in my heart that the consensus of the room would carry the day and influence the process. After all, was not that part of the William Penn Trust’s mandate? That the process be community driven? Here was community consensus, and that is no small feat in this town!

Alas, this past Monday at the Advisory Group meeting, we were informed by Steinberg, by Woodcock, by city solicitor Kevin Greenburger representing the Mayor’s office, by Rina Cutler representing PennDOT (who’s only concern is making sure that second rate transportation plans get shoved through the system so no one has to do any erasing) that the casinos are coming, that the consensus of the community does not, in fact, matter, but that if we wanted to go ahead and pick out pretty railing and light fixtures, we should remain interested. Of course, there are serious issues besides casinos at stake, and I think many believe that there’s some way to resolve the other issues while ignoring the elephant in the room. Actually, most often the people representing the various civic groups are told, this is the only process in town. Like it or lump it. Well, I’m officially lumping it.

I see really talented people in Steinberg and Woodcock, who are very dedicated to their task. But they have let the grey blandness of unimaginative and brutal bureaucrats- whose best idea for our riverfront is to turn it into a Las Vegas style strip- beat back their enthusiasm for what is possible. The reason great ideas and true progress fail in this city is not because we lack talented, imaginative people, but that those in charge of this city’s development at the political level are untalented, unimaginative, only able to execute the same plays over and over. They are the reason we have not progressed as a city. They have actively impeded progress.

I remain a fan of the best possible riverfront and a believer in the problem-solving wonder of brilliant design solutions. I will attend their design workshops- I’m sure they’ll be very educational. However, I will be dedicating most of my (almost nonexistent) free time to getting signatures on a petition to place a referendum on the May ballot opposing casinos in our neighborhoods. If it passes, it will effectively kick the licensed casinos off our riverfront.

We have been told repeatedly that there is no appropriate place to talk about this issue, to demand a debate. We are supposed to just be polite, sit on our hands, shut up, go away, and just be happy with what is given to us. I say, enough is enough. I, for one, am sick of waiting for people who know what is right to do the right thing. And in fact there are actually lots of people who know what is right who ARE doing the right thing- they are shivering in the cold, collecting 20,000 petition signatures one by one. I’m with them.

A lot has happened around the city in the last three weeks. Casino Free Philadelphia has launched the largest petition drive in the history of the city to get a charter change question on the May ballot that says casinos may not be sited within 1500′ of a residence, church, school or playground. Whether you are for, against or neutral about the casinos, I think most people can agree that Philadelphia should have the right to vote on it, and this charter change will give us that opportunity. It’s a right denied to us by our state legislators when they passed Act 71 in the middle of the night over a July 4th holiday without the benefit of a public debate, but a right we Philadelphians can give to ourselves. So sign the petition if it crosses your path, and consider helping to circulate it. Contact Casino Free Philadelphia to plug into the effort.

On January 18th, I attended an FCC hearing packed with people testifying against the latest push towards further media consolidation. Media consolidation has alaready eroded the quality, diversity and volume of information that gets out to the public. Our democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and a watchdog press is a huge part of that. When 95% of the media is owned by a handful of powerful corporations, organizations primarilty in the entertainment business, the free exchange of ideas is endangered. Movie openings become huge press events, while dissent towards government policies becomes a mere blip on the radar. Americans have almost no clue what’s going on in foreign countries. News staff keeps getting cut across media, and the result is reporting on events, but no analysis of public policy.

Consolidation is terrible for local coverage- an efficiency of scale means that programming is centralized and distributed across many networks. That’s why, if you go to any city in the country, it sounds like you’re listening to the same radio stations. Our current media does not reflect our diversity as a nation. 30% of our population are minorities, yet only 3.6% of media outlets are minority owned. Women make up 50% of the population, yet own less than 5% of media outlets. The FCC is not representing the best interests of the people despite the fact that the broadcast spectrum belongs to us and is held in trust by them to regulate on our behalf. In this exchange, media companies become plenty rich, so it’s an equitable trade, but there are rules, the same rules that are constantly being eroded, that obligate them to act in the public’s best interest. Many media democracy organizations have become alarmed that the FCC is burying its own reports, reports that prove, for instance, that locally owned news organizations provide better coverage of local news. Learn more here. Locally, Media Tank does a good job of covering media issues, as does PennPIRG.